FOOD SUSTAINABILITY INDEX

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Water shortages: A wake-up call from Cape Town

As the world celebrates World Water Day 2018, the world needs to confront serious water shortages. Could Cape Town, South Africa’s largest city, be the first major urban conurbation in the world to run out of water? The municipal authorities recently announced that “Day Zero”—the time when most taps are predicted to run dry—has been pushed back by one month, to July 9th. This welcome (albeit limited) reprieve reflects the success of emergency conservation measures. Nonetheless, Cape Town’s ongoing water crisis is a powerful indication of the wider challenge posed by global climate change. Regions such as the Middle East—which already suffer from acute water shortages—will need to intensify their efforts if they are to avoid serious economic and social consequences.

Based on meteorological data going back to 1921, the South African Weather Service has confirmed that two of the past three years have been the driest on record for Cape Town. South Africa as a whole suffered from a crippling drought in 2016. However, although satisfactory rainfall subsequently relieved most regions, Cape Town has remained dry. Despite cutting collective water consumption by more than half over the past three years, the resulting impact on the city’s reservoirs has been devastating. In late February the average amount of usable water remaining in the reservoirs amounted to just 14% of total capacity.

As at early February 2018 cumulative losses for the Western Cape’s agricultural sector were estimated at R14bn (US$1.2bn) and have continued to mount. The drought is exerting a particularly heavy toll on the production of vegetables and fruit. Farmers have also been forced to slaughter large numbers of livestock, due to a shortage of grazing and fodder.

A much broader problem

At the global level, rapid population growth and climate change pose difficult challenges with respect to the water-food nexus. As underlined by a recent World Bank report, the problems are especially daunting in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). High rates of population growth (averaging around 2% per year), rapid urbanisation and inadequate conservation efforts are causing the region’s already-scarce water resources (especially groundwater) to be depleted at an unprecedented rate. According to the World Bank, the economic losses from climate-related water scarcity in MENA could amount to an estimated 6-14% of GDP by 2050.

The Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, corroborates the World Bank’s findings. Countries in the MENA region are located near the bottom of the global FSI rankings for both “water scarcity” and “sustainability of water withdrawal”.

So what can be done?

First, much more attention needs to be paid to raising the public’s awareness of the importance and value of water. This can be done through a variety of means, including civil society initiatives, the promotion of water conservation in schools and general media campaigns.

Second, technology can be deployed to help ameliorate water scarcity. Smart metering and improved techniques to recycle water and curb losses have a vital role to play. Advances in membrane technology and the falling cost of desalination plants are also opening up new options, even for poorer countries.

Third, and crucially, governments will need to commit to policies that create greater incentives for water conservation and efficiency. Effective water subsidies in the MENA region are currently among the highest in the world. Instead of being recycled, more than half of the region’s wastewater is not even collected. Furthermore, a large proportion of the wastewater that is collected ends up being returned to the environment untreated. With agriculture accounting for nearly four-fifths of water usage in the MENA region, losses in the food chain also have to be addressed. Around a third of the food bought by consumers in Middle Eastern countries is wasted, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Going to war over water?

Effective management of water resources in the MENA region is made more problematic by the fact that many of the countries rely heavily on shared waters. More than 60% of water resources are transboundary and all countries share at least one aquifer.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), currently under construction in the headwaters of the Blue Nile, is provoking major regional tensions. Once completed, the dam will be Africa’s largest. Producing 6,000 MW of electricity, GERD will provide a major boost to Ethiopia’s economic growth. However, as a downstream country, Egypt is concerned that the dam will play havoc with the flow of the Nile, potentially crippling its vital agricultural sector. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, recently vowed to take whatever steps are necessary to protect Egypt’s share of water from the Nile, characterising it as a “matter of life and death“.

Against this backdrop—and in an era when climate change is threatening to exacerbate the scarcity of water in certain (already unstable) regions—there is a danger that disputes over water could increasingly become a new source of international tensions.